She sat on her bed, giving the creature an opportunity to investigate the food.
“I don’t think snakes eat crackers.” Jillian worked the zoom controls on her camera.
The creature sniffed loudly and then darted forward to snatch up the goldfish. It opened wide and shoved the cracker into its surprisingly large mouth.
“I don’t think it’s a snake.” Louise slid another goldfish onto the edge of the desk after the creature retreated back to the generator. She snapped her fingers together softly. “Cracker? Snakes don’t have legs.”
“Gecko?” Jillian guessed.
The goldfish was snatched up, crammed into the mouth full of teeth, and chomped loudly. Crumbs rained down on the desktop to be picked up with delicate claw-tipped fingers.
“I–I don’t think geckos have hands.”
Jillian attempted to keep filming and turn on her tablet. “Logically, it’s most likely an Elfhome species of lizard, meaning that it’s dependent on magic to exist, which is why it’s staying near the generator.”
“I think it looks—” Louise squeaked as the thing suddenly leapt onto her shoulder.
They eyed each other nearly nose to nose. It was only about six inches long, covered in scales of a delicate rose color. It clung to her with tiny little pinpricks as claws poked through her shirt. There were five claws on each foot. It had a mane of long slender filaments that seemed too thick to be hair.
It snapped its tiny fingers, opened its wide mouth full of teeth, and said in a tiny, childlike voice, “Cracker!”
Louise blinked in surprise and then fumbled out a small handful of goldfish and held them up to the creature, forgetting to give the training prompt.
It used both front paws to grab up the crackers and shove them all into its mouth, one by one, at express speed. When Louise’s palm was empty, the creature snapped its fingers again and commanded, “Cracker!”
“It can talk!” Jillian whispered.
“She has thumbs.” Louise fed it another cracker while carefully shifting closer to the generator.
“She?”
“She feels like a girl to me.” Louise wondered if the crackers were actually good for the little thing.
The creature snapped her fingers and commanded, “Cracker!”
“Where are the strawberries?” Louise asked.
“Here!” Jillian found the clear plastic container with the chocolate-dipped strawberries.
Chocolate could be fatal to dogs, so Louise picked it off.
“Cracker!” There was impatient snapping of tiny fingers. “Cracker!”
Louise offered the bare strawberry. A giant of its type, the fruit dwarfed the head of the little creature that eyed it dubiously. It looked from Louise to the massive strawberry to Louise and then back to the fruit.
“Strawberry.” Louise took a bite to show that it was edible. “Strawberry?”
The creature plucked the fruit out of her hand, turned it around and around in puzzled study, and then sniffed it. It took one cautious nibble and then, eyes going wide, crammed the entire fruit into its mouth.
“Oh, she’s so cute.” Jillian zoomed in with her camera. “Nom, nom, nom, nom. But what is she?”
“You know, she looks like one of those dragons on Chinese menus.”
The dragon looked up. “Nom, nom, nom, nom.” It snapped its fingers. “Strawberry!”
They took turns feeding her the strawberries and looking up information on Elfhome dragons.
“There’s almost nothing here,” Jillian complained.
“While apparently dragons vary in size, they are reported to be very large, fire-breathing, and dangerous,” Louise read what she found aloud. “Approach with caution. Maybe she’s a baby dragon.”
“Do you think she can breathe fire?” Jillian asked.
They stared at the baby dragon who was munching on the last strawberry.
“Nom, nom, nom.” She licked her fingers and then snapped them. “Cracker!”
“She eats a lot,” Jillian said.
Louise broke open the bag of beef jerky. The baby dragon had learned that new containers equaled new food. The little creature grasped the bag of beef jerky in one hand and with the other was stuffing pieces of the dried meat into its mouth as fast as it could chew. “Nom, nom, nom!”
“Good thing you got so many snacks,” Jillian said.
“We should give her a name.”
“We’re keeping her? What do we tell Mom and Dad?”
“We don’t have to tell them. We’ll keep her in our room. We could get a little aquarium for her when we’re at school.”
Jillian shook her head. “That’s not going to work. Sooner or later, they’re going to find out.”
“We just need to buy some time until we can figure out what to tell them. We can come up with some story about finding her in the subway or something.” It couldn’t be “buying,” because they’d try to make them take the dragon back to the mythical store. There was also the uneasy question of where they’d gotten the money to buy an exotic pet. “Think of it as a challenge.”
Jillian flopped onto her bed. “I never thought I’d get tired of lying.”
“We need to name her.”
“Let’s call her Greedy Gut.” Jillian patted the bed beside her. “Greedy Gut! Greedy Gut!”
The baby dragon stuck out its tongue and blew a raspberry.
“I don’t think she likes that name.”
So while the baby dragon polished off the beef jerky, they tried out names. They had named lots of characters in the past, but nothing alive with a personality that they couldn’t change at whim.
Louise felt like a name was floating on the edge of her awareness, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. “It should be something bright, and happy, and female.”
“Bossy.” Jillian got another raspberry for the suggestion. “She reminds me of some senile old grandmother.”
The name finally came within reach. “Joy. I think her name is Joy.” No raspberry. “See, she likes it.”
Jillian came to eye the baby dragon. “No, she’s just falling asleep now that all the food is gone. I think her name is Bottomless Pit.”
“Her name is Joy,” Louise repeated more firmly. “And you can’t blame her for being hungry; she hasn’t had anything to eat for hundreds of years.”
Jillian gasped. “Oh my God! Lou! What’s in the other eleven nactka still in the box?”
“Oh no!” Louise leapt to the codex and quickly looked up the longest passage regarding the device. “Twelve loaded nactka! They all have something in them!”
“Eleven more like her?” Jillian eyed the baby dragon. “What would we do with twelve of them?”
Louise was amazed that Jillian even asked the question. “She’s obviously very intelligent. She might even be smarter than a human. It’s been — what — five minutes and she already knows three words of English.”
“‘Nom, nom, nom’ is not a word,” Jillian said.
“We need to get them out of the box!”
“What if the elves took the box? They were going to take three items.”
They hacked into the museum and checked the security monitors, but the box had always been screened from the cameras. There was no way of telling if the box was still there.
“They would have to tell France that the elves took the box.” Louise dove into the e-mail system to sift through the curator’s mailbox. Dated late Friday night was an e-mail to the curator at the Louvre explaining that the elves had asked for the return of the box. Not surprisingly, there was no answer until early Monday morning Eastern Standard Time — or normal business hours for Greenwich time — objecting and asking the AMNH not to allow the elves to take the box. The answer was short and simple: the elves had already returned to Elfhome with it.